thecoalman - 11:49 am on Jan 22, 2010 (gmt 0)

Garbage in, garbage out. You always want to source from the highest quality material possible. For example if you needed a file at different bitrates you would not do this:

DV >> WMV@ 2000kbps >> WMV@ 1000kbps >> WMV@ 500kbps....etc

Instead:

DV >> WMV@ 2000kbps

DV >> WMV@ 1000kbps

DV >> WMV@ 500kbps

When you feed an encoder nice clean material the better off the results will be even at lower bitrates. For example a typical Hollywood DVD is 6000kbps and if done right can produce great results at that bitrate. If you're encoding home footage from VHS which is typically very noisy and hand held you need to apply much more bitrate to compensate for all the noise and movement.

Same thing applies with MPEG2 when comparing it to DV since the MPEG2 contains so much less information. Macroblocking in MPEG2 is not really noticeable at the higher bitrates but it is there on a very small scale.

FYI you don't necessarily need any equipment for that experiment except to produce the original DV file, you should be able to find samples on the web. It would all be done with software.